The Weight Of The Matter

Matt. 11: 28-29 “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

Last year when I got married I sent my mother wedding pictures. The first thing she said to me when she received them was, “You put on weight.” What I heard was, “You’re fat you need to diet and lose weight!” But she immediately followed it up with, “but you look GOOD!” Whew, she scared me there for a minute.

You see, when I left home thirteen years ago my weight was borderline undernourishment at 105-110 lbs. I’m 5’4” and it might be what the medical charts at the time deemed a normal weight for my height, I felt too thin when my jeans of teen years of a size 3-5 fit. After arriving in Texas I began eating regularly and could feel my health in my weight gain change.

I wasn’t scared or paranoid because I knew I was still taking care of myself, walking and getting a decent amount of exercise with the amount of food I was eating. As years passed by I did put on weight and I grew to a whopping 130 lbs. And ballooning into a size 7! It sounds like a lot to me because this was 25 added pounds but everyone keeps saying over and over that with age comes weight gain. And well, I’m not a teen anymore.

I recently looked at a weight chart to see what is normal for a 5’4” woman and wouldn’t you know, I’m now a ‘normal’ weight for my height? I was never concerned with my weight before, never owning a scale and the only time I was weighed was when I had a doctor visit, in other words, hardly ever. 

When I talked to my brother last year, he told me that my dad, on his deathbed, took one look at his son and said, “You put on weight.” (My nephew had lost a large amount of weight but apparently gained some of it back), that is what my dad was referring to but I can bet my nephew heard the same thing I did when my mother told me I had put on weight. 

I never noticed it before but it seems it’s all about weight. My sister is too skinny, my cousin is too big, ‘I’ have gained weight, my nephew has put on weight, my (overweight) aunt lost too much weight when she got cancer and became unrecognizable as a thin woman and it goes on and on! Not just in my family, I see a lot of friends with health issues and weight problems and I think to  myself, what is the world coming to that we judge people by the size of their weight?

How and why have we as a human race become so obsessed with our weight and our looks? Why do we feel that we need to be a certain way so as not to be scrutinized? Why can’t we age gracefully and with dignity? So what if your hair gets thinner and grayer as you get older? So what if you get beautiful ‘I lived life’ lines on your face? Why does everyone need to point out that ‘yes’ with age things change?

Well, I used this in a post on facebook five years ago and it had nothing to do with the political year, mind you. "Change is change. Trees change every season do we complain? Our perennials change, do we gripe? Sometimes we just need to learn something from a change, whether good or bad, in one way or another, we too will be changed because of change."

When Jesus was carrying the cross, it was never about the weight of the cross. He knew that with that cross there was going to be change, change that people would HAVE to accept or deny. He was more than willing to carry the weight of a HUMAN RACE. That’s right people, He knew no color, He did not pick and choose what gender was right or wrong. He didn’t separate Himself from the heavy and the thin. The only weight He knew was the weight of the cross and that for thousands of years (ages) the cross would carry change!

Listen people, we’re on the threshold of change. Yes this is a political year and there is going to be change, for better or for worse, change is inevitable. You’re getting older, there is going to be changes in your body and health. That little baby you’re holding, he/she is going to change. He won’t be a baby forever and you my friend are not going to be young forever.

Instead of pointing out and poking fun at the changes taking place, embrace them! Yes, you're getting older, grayer, heavier, thinner, wrinklier, weightier but know this, there is no burden too big that the Cross didn’t bear at the finish line. Carrying the cross was bigger than any challenge that you and I face on a daily basis. Think about that.

I think I see why non-believers don’t believe in the Jesus story because who in their right mind would carry a cross and be hung on it for millions of people nevertheless a single friend. We live in a selfish society that won’t even let the slow driver in front of us enjoy their ride at a slow pace because we’re in a hurry to be first. We live in a society that doesn’t embrace change unless it’s our make-up and hair color, we live in a world where it is all about the facade.

When you meet someone for the first time, before looking at their size, or how many wrinkles they have or how gray their hair is, notice first that they are human and are living life, aging and growing just like you! If you see a person's inner beauty first, you won’t even see their outer shell for judgment.

2 Cor. 4:17 “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;”

Quotation Saturday

John 15:19 “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”

Advent is a time to wait, listen and ponder the awesome wonder of God. Pause and spend some time this season reflecting on God’s gift of love. Jesus IS the reason for the season.

“Advent: the time to listen for footsteps – you can’t hear footsteps when you’re running yourself.”

~ Bill McKibben

“The supreme trick of Old Scratch is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos—the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all.”

~ Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac

“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; So that, at the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.”

~ The Book of Common Prayer, published in 1662

“Christmas has lost its meaning for us because we have lost the spirit of expectancy. We cannot prepare for an observance. We must prepare for an experience.”

~ Handel Brown

PRIDE

“For the believer, humility is honesty about one's greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another.”
~ Criss Jami

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Chasing a person doesn’t give you value or build values in you. You earn your value by chasing morality and practicing dignity.”
~ Shannon L. Alder

“Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil.”
~ Douglas Wilson

WISDOM

Pss. 49:3 “My mouth shall speak of wisdom; and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding.”

~ King James Version of the Holy Bible

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
~ Isaac Asimov

The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
~ Paulo Coelho

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
~ Confucius

JUDGMENT

1 Chr. 16:14 “He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth.”

Job 19:29 “Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment.”

Pss. 37:28 “For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.”

Pr. 19:28 “An ungodly witness scorneth judgment: and the mouth of the wicked devoureth iniquity.”

Quotation Saturday

"The heart knows its own bitterness and a stranger does not share its joy" ~ Proverbs 14:10

I have chosen these quotes in light of the death of a beloved man who always made everyone else smile but was really crying on the onside. I know too many suffering with depression and maybe now is the time to bring this illness to the light of day. No more hiding!

SUICIDE

“…They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
~ David Foster Wallace

“A lot of you cared, just not enough.”
~ Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Did you really want to die?"
"No one commits suicide because they want to die."
"Then why do they do it?"
"Because they want to stop the pain.”
~ Tiffanie DeBartolo, How to Kill a Rock Star

DEPRESSION

“As her analyst had told her: the deeper buried the distress, the further into the body it went. The digestive system was about as far as it could go to hide.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”
~ Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral's Kiss

“Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would.”
~ Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.”
~ Sylvia Plath

LONELINESS

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
~ Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
~ Maya Angelou

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”
~ Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
~ Mother Teresa

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
~ Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

JUDGMENT

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”
~ Henry Ward Beecher

For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.”
~ Galileo Galilei, Frammenti e lettere

“You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.”
~ Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.”
~ Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

Living in Sin

Jer. 50:6 My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their restingplace.

People love to read about OTHER people having hard times and struggling with life. Take for example what you read everyday (whether internet or the newspaper) Is the first thing you read about a lost dog whose found its owner? Good things happening in the world? No? You read about the house fire that took lives and a home. You read about all the negative things happening in the world and why? Because humans are wired to relish other people’s pain, it seems to me.

Please don’t give me the bull about it being the only thing that is being reported. That’s just hogwash, it is what you CHOSE to read, isn’t it? Just like my blogging days, you don’t read the Feel-Good posts (some do and I thank you) and my uplifting words, I get amazingly more hits when I talk about everything that goes WRONG in my life. Humans are hard-wired that way.

Now onto me living in sin: Here’s the gist. I am living with a man and am unmarried to this man. Period! Right? WRONG! It is sinful, I know this but it continues? I have been with Steven eleven years now. Sure it would be so easy to just walk away and give up on this friendship entirely but is that what would please Him?

Last year my friend at church encouraged me to get the much needed divorce from my ex to make things right with God. My ex kept saying for years that HE’D file and by last year and still no filing, I took it upon myself and God saw to it that everything went smoothly and the divorce was finalized. My friend also assumed that the divorce would open the door and allow Steven and I to be married, but a proposal never came. Did I weep and stomp my feet demanding marriage? No. Why? Because I really didn’t want ‘marriage’.

I am a female, living with a man. And that’s a sin?  I’m not having adulterated sex, hosting orgies, skipping from man to man, no, I’m a female living with a man who is taking care of me and my son; food, shelter, and the comfort of not being alone. And THAT is a sin? I don’t understand what makes one sin different from any other sin. Sin is sin, I get that.

So my church is against the ‘appearance’ of living as a couple and not being married in a spiritually blessed union. But isn’t judging me by ‘appearance’ a sin also? What makes it okay for them to sin? When mine is wrong ‘in their eyes’.

Last year when we had a ‘meeting’ with the pastor he flat out told me to leave Steven for a few months, date other people, and live life ‘outside of sin’, and if we found our way back to each other, marry, and THEN live together.

WHAT?

First of all, Steven is a caregiver! For eleven years he has taken care of me and we both have struggled through disabilities (his blindness and my arthritis in my back) and yet he STILL takes care of me. He knows I’m not eligible for S.S. or any other means of assistance from the government and yet he STILL takes care of me.

Second of all: Where would I go? No money. No family. Nothing. Just a son who still needs to get his license to get a job and a CAR!

Thirdly: Meet other men? No thank you! I have been with two men in my life and three strikes I’m out! So no, dating another man is not an option for me.

This judgment of ‘living in sin’ has placed enormous guilt on me. I never felt guilty before everyone started saying, “When are you two getting married?” and “Living in sin is a sin not accepted by Christ!”

So are they telling me that if we walked up to Christ, He’d look us in the eye and say, “I can’t help you as long as you are living in sin.”? Really?  Is this the Christ I’m eternally faithful to? Am I disillusioned?

NO I’M NOT!!!

I KNOW what the bible says about marriage. The sanctity of marriage is a spiritual sacred step that two people take in binding themselves together, til death do they part! Steven and I don’t feel that for one another and that is wrong? This is where my confusion creeps in.

I love Steven, he is my best friend who knows every ugly thing about me and I him. We’re roommates and nothing more and I’m being judged for living with my best friend? I have taken this to God and HE doesn’t judge us. HE knows us, our situation and has NEVER put on our hearts to get married so as not to ‘live in sin’. HE knows our sin, sent his Son to DIE for our sin and when people go around judging other people for their sins, I’d like to say, he who is without sin, go ahead, cast the first stone!

When I met my ex, I was 15. I married him at seventeen and we stayed married for twenty years before it fell apart. We knew it was broken and we made the decision to part. He let me down. I was spiritually bound to him for life and he let me down in a big way.

The blossoming friendship online grew to a physical friendship in person with Steven. I knew he didn’t love God the way I did and I thought I could ‘help’ him find God. Not by force, just by happenstance meaning by things that happened, he’d turn to God. And sure enough he did but then this trivial thing with the church happened and he’s giving up on God? How sad to watch his nine years of growth go right down the tubes. I think ego and pride, YouTube, gaming (works of satan) stepped in and snared him.

And now satan wants me to step aside and leave Steven to him? I don’t think so, satan! That is NOT how I roll! I will stay until he tells me to leave. I will be a caring, loving friend for his lifetime if he needs me to be. I will continue to show him how Christ works in MY life and maybe, just maybe one day he’ll be swayed BACK to Christ. Just because he’s giving up on God does NOT mean God is giving up on him!

Prov. 28: 10 Whoso causeth the righteous to go astray in an evil way, he shall fall himself into his own pit: but the upright shall have good things in possession.

Quotation Saturday

Many of you might wonder why I choose the quotes I pick to post on my Quotation Saturday. In the experimental stages, I’m going to express why I chose the quotes I chose.

Here goes:

I chose PRIDE because all to often this week I have seen chest pounding antics of people who seem to be too high on a pride-filled horse and personally need to be knocked off and smacked with reality.

PRIDE

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
~ Jane Austen

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
~ C.S. Lewis

“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.”
~ Søren Kierkegaard

“Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.”
~ Jon Foreman

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.”
~ Dale Carnegie

I chose judgment because it seems that prideful people are placing judgment on others these days. I do believe if they are without sin, then go ahead cast stones.

JUDGMENT

“If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.”
~ Junot Díaz

“Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.”
~ Criss Jami

“Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?”
~ Eckhart Tolle

“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.”
~ Oscar Wilde

I chose vanity because I feel pride and vanity are very much alike. They’re not but people seem to embrace them both.

VANITY

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
~ Jane Austen

“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.”
~ Tennessee Williams

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.”
~ Dale Carnegie

I chose dignity because people seem to lack this very much.

DIGNITY

“Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.”
~ Aristotle

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows
with the ability to say no to oneself.”
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.”
~ Rick Bragg

“People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.”
~ Octavia E. Butler

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”
~ Laura Hillenbrand

I feel if more people had dignity they would be less prideful and stop judging others before they judge themselves. ~ Joni

Just because you have an opinion on something doesn’t mean everyone else shares that opinion. Expecting them to is making them as arrogant as you. ~ Joni

 I chose boasting because I’m so sick and tired of everyone’s bloated ego’s that they feel the need to spread THEIR ways to the world.

BOASTING

“The truest human is the one whose conduct proceeds from goodwill and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.”
~ Markesa Yeager

“What do you have that was not given to you? And if it was given, how can you boast as if it were your own?”
~ 1 Corinthians 5: 7

“The maker of the stars would rather die for you than live without you. And that is a fact. So if you need to brag, brag about that.”
~ Max Lucado